The epoxidation of alkene into alkylene oxide by reacting the alkene with an organic hydroperoxide is known in the art.
For instance, in the commonly known method for co-producing propylene oxide and styrene starting from ethylbenzene, the aforementioned epoxidation reaction is applied. In general this co-production process involves the steps of (i) reacting ethylbenzene with oxygen or air to form ethylbenzene hydroperoxide, (ii) reacting the ethylbenzene hydroperoxide thus obtained with propane in the presence of an epoxidation catalyst to yield propylene oxide and 1-phenyl-ethanol, and (iii) converting the 1-phenyl-ethanol into styrene by dehydration using a suitable dehydration catalyst.
Another method for producing alkylene oxide is the coproduction of propylene oxide and methyl tert.-butyl ether (MTBE) starting from isobutane and propane. This process is well known in the art and involves similar reaction steps as the styrene/propylene oxide production process described in the previous paragraph. In the epoxidation step tert-butyl hydroperoxide is reacted with propane forming propylene oxide and tert-butanol in the presence of a heterogeneous epoxidation catalyst. Tert-butanol is subsequently etherified with methanol into MTBE, which is used as an additive in motor fuels.
WO 01/70712 describes a method for the manufacture of oxirane compounds from organic peroxide, other than ethylbenzene hydroperoxide, and olefin in the presence of a fixed bed catalyst, characterized in that the conditions (1) to (4) indicated below are satisfied:    (1) the catalyst bed is divided into n-layers and these are used serially (where n is an integer of value 2 or more),    (2) the fresh organic peroxide is divided and supplied at the entry to each catalyst layer,    (3) fresh olefin is supplied at the entry to the first catalyst layer, and    (4) the reaction mixture discharged from the exit of each catalyst layer except the final catalyst layer is supplied respectively to the entry of the next catalyst layer. WO-A-01/70712 does not relate to a special treatment of fresh catalyst.